Pens/Stars Recap: Good grief. Penguins have historically bad period, get blown out

The Pens do something they’ve never done in franchise history, which isn’t a good thing when it means giving up six goals in the opening period at home..

The Penguins stick with what worked last game against Washington for tonight’s contest against the visiting Stars.

First period

Dallas gets going early, Ryan Graves makes an aggressive swipe for the puck on Matt Duchene and misses. Duchene’s in free and his shot hits off the top of Joel Blomqvist’s pad and goes in. 1-0 just 2:33 into the contest.

Pittsburgh settles down a bit but Dallas gets the next goal anyways. Looks like a nothing play off the faceoff. Erik Karlsson might have deflected it and probably didn’t help on the screen but another one gets by Blomqvist. 2-0.

The Stars strike again, a long breakout pass is sent ahead and Mason Marchment splits Kris Letang and Matt Grzelcyk. Marchment gets to the puck first and snaps it in. 3-0 in the first 10:16 and that will the end of the night for Blomqvist.

Pittsburgh puts Alex Nedeljkovic into the game. They also have put Evgeni Malkin back on the top line with Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell (though temporarily). Nothing helps, Dallas scores again. They hang onto the puck a bit, make a cross-ice pass and Miro Heiskanen chips in his first goal of the season to widen the lead to 4-0.

It gets even worse, Sidney Crosby wins an offensive zone faceoff and the Pens find a way to ruin that when Matt Grzelcyk makes a soft pass to the middle of the ice that his teammate wasn’t ready for or in position to receive Heiskanen picks off and takes the other way. The defender (!!) is in on a clean breakaway and beats Nedeljkovic to make it 5-0, only 14:37 into the game.

Crosby’s obviously frustrated as hell and takes a roughing call after laying a big hit and a couple of pushes. The Pens get a short-handed odd-man rush but can’t finish. That’s bad news since it gives Dallas a 2-on-1 the other way and they make it look easy with the pass and conversion by Tyler Seguin to increase the score to a terrible 6-0.

Worst period ever. In the land of hyperbole (the internet), that’s no exaggeration.

Second period

Amazingly, both teams show up for the second period. The Stars, naturally enough, are in cruise control and not pressing too much. The game doesn’t heat up again until Brendan Smith boards Jesse Puljujarvi to send Pittsburgh to their first power play of the night, and it’s another debacle.

Dallas gets a couple really good shots, Nedeljkovic saves his team the ignominy of going down 7-0.

Jake Oettinger will be denied a shutout. Valtteri Puustinen enters the zone and pulls up, finds a passing lane to hit Anthony Beauvillier on the right wing. Beauvillier lifts the puck up and in the net. 6-1, 4:57 left to go in the second.

Noel Acciari takes a hooking penalty but the Penguins kill it off.

Buzzer sounds to keep this baby moving.

Third period

Not much going on until Crosby goes back to the penalty box for a slashing minor. The Pens kill it off but almost immediately later Malkin is whistled for hooking. The Stars convert this time on the power play practice. 7-1.

The game ends before any more damage can be done.

Some thoughts

• No need to over-complicate things: Dallas = good, Pittsburgh = bad. The Penguins are at risk of getting embarrassed against the better teams in the league and this wasn’t pretty. Does it have to be this ugly? No, but if one team barely bothers to show up this could happen.
• Maybe we should have seen this coming, the Stars were peeved about falling behind 4-0 to Winnipeg in their last game. They were looking to get right and back on track. Needless to say, mission accomplished there. That note can’t excuse and isn’t an attempt to wash away a six-goal period, but when a good team plays the Penguins and is very focused on bouncing back, well, we see what can happen.
• Part of the dread is with current defensive alignment one of Matt Grzelcyk, Erik Karlsson or Ryan Graves are on the ice at all times. Any and all are defensive debacles waiting to happen. That was on display fast and furious in the first period. The problems aren’t limited to that awful triumvirate but they sure do manage to be right around the worst of the breakdowns more often than not and there’s no reprieve. When one leaves the ice, another one is coming on.
• Gotta wonder if deep down Tristan Jarry wasn’t that upset about sitting out tonight as a scratch. If he saw any reports in the last two weeks it might have been that the Pens have cleaned up a bit defensively but you couldn’t fault him for not believing it tonight. Also, what if the Pens had put Jarry in? He would have flopped and blamed for everything, which probably isn’t fair but would be indicative that the conditioning stint didn’t do any good. Not sure where that goes from here but at least he was spared having to suit up for this game.
• There was some talk that Blomqvist could have made an extra save or two, but a goal-by-goal audit of what he saw makes that a big ask. He couldn’t keep the puck out of the net, which is the goalie’s job, but it was going to be a matter of time for any goalie to give up a ton in that first period with the way it was going.
• Bryan Rust went down in a heap in the second period and was slow to get back to the bench, seeming again to favor his lower body. He nary missed a shift along the way, but given that he’s already once aggravated his injury suffered in early October, who knows.
• On this Veteran’s Day the Pens acknowledged a 98-year old Indiana county man who served under Patton and was at the Battle of the Bulge. So at least there was one cool moment in this game to give props to one of the last remaining of the greatest generation.

How do you reset from this one? Pittsburgh played probably their best period of the night in their last period coming into this game Friday against Washington. They followed that up with probably the worst period any NHL team has had this season. It’s going to be hard to flush this one away like it never happened and move onto the next one on Wednesday against Detroit, but somehow that is what they must attempt to do.